I even published a paper in Dialogos about the Vietnam War and Chicano(a) Literature focusing on all the different genres of literature (poetry, short stories, teatro).
And these were novels, there are a host of short stories and teatro that involve the war. Jorge Mariscal also put out a book Aztlan and Vietnamwhich analyzes various Chicano writing on the war.
Writers focused on the Vietnam War before and after the late 1990s, but the proliferation of publishing in those five years was tremendous.
The glut on this topic may result from the Chicano Movement occurring during the Vietnam War and many veterans and family members, by the late 1990s, were ready to talk about the war.
Chicano Writing and Korea: Lacking
Because the Korean War falls before the Chicano(a) Renaissance in literature, Chicano(a) writers have focused very little this war in our literature.
So just off the top of my head, I'll try describe some book I recall that focus on the Korean War. As the 60th Anniversary of the start of the war is today, it's time our stories on this era come out.
Like Charley Trujillo's book Soldados, publishers would not pick up Among the Valiant (Trujillo's book became an award-winning one). Morin pieced together many stories of Chicano veterans and medal winner into this heroic collection of narratives.
After he could not find a publisher, the American G.I. Forum pitched in to assist him to publish the book. The Morin family was trying to get the book republished some years ago. I'm not sure how it turned out.
Pillars of Gold and Silverby Beatriz de la Gárza focuses on a mother and daughter in the aftermath of their father's death in the Korean War. I have not read the book. A late 1990s Arte Publico publication, the review I've found online are not very flattering.
The only book I know that gives a total Chicano focus on the Korean War is The Useless Servants by Rolando Hinojosa. Part of his Rafe Buenrostro series, below if the review from Publishers Weekly:
"The timeless truths of war -- the slaughter of civilians, atrocities condoned, legions of refugees -- are related with near-documentary realism in this powerful novel of the Korean War.
Told in the form of a journal kept by Rafe Buenrostro, a Mexican-American soldier from Texas, it also portrays the social dynamics of this particular conflict.
Through his protagonist's voice, Hinojosa ( Rites and Witnesses ; Partners in Crime ) draws on his own experience in Korea to reveal the racism that Mexican-Americans faced from fellow soldiers.
Buenrostro's tense, fragmentary diary entries expose combat's seamy underside: black troops kept in segregated units (though they would later fight alongside whites); thousands of Korean civilians shot to death in unacknowledged barbarism; Marines massacred after being issued old, inaccurate survey maps; napalm and fragmentation bombs giving an eerie foretaste of Vietnam.
As the corpses pile up, those left standing begin to fear they will go crazy: one lieutenant does snap, committing suicide. Though his diary entries preclude developing a plot in the conventional sense, Hinojosa gives us a graphic picture of the unchanging face of war--raw, gritty and inhumane."
One of the most interesting books on the Korean War and Chicanos falls into the Literatura chicaniesca catagory.
The story focuses on a Chicano draft dodger and paints the Korean War as imperialistic and profit driven. Kahn was an expat in Mexico and was blacklisted in the U.S. and fled to Mexico because he refused to testify before the Committee on UnAmerican Activities:
Set during the Korean War and McCarthy eras, this novel tells the story of Gilberto, a young Mexican American who, after his mother's death on the eve of his induction into the U.S. Army, decides instead to leave the country and travel into Mexico to find his only remaining family. Gordon Kahn (1902-1962) was an important Hollywood screenwriter until he was blacklisted for his independent political opinions. - Publisher Description
If you know of any other books by Chicana(o)s on the Korean War or the Korean War plays a part, send us a comment.
Korean El Paso
For El Paso, the Korean War is important. After the war, the Korean population in El Paso began to grow. Many soldiers brought back war brides, and many soldiers still marry Korean women and bring them to El Paso and subsequently decide to settle here.
Any drive to the northeast side of town, one can see the English-Korean translations on signs, the Asian supermarkets, and more.. The Korean shop owners of Downtown are a powerful lobby and one of the most vocal against the landgrab of Downtown and the Segundo Barrio. There are three Korean protestant churches. Check out this article by David Romo which was published on The Newpaper Tree:Voices of Dissent: Little Seoul in El Paso.
Also check out the entry for "Koreans" in the Texas Handbook Online. According to the ALA, Korean is the fifth most spoken language in El Paso County after Spanish, English, Chinese, and German.
Well, I'm off to Ruidoso, NM for the weekend. Have a good one...
One thing that is great about Chicana(o) writers is that we don't need to wait around for others to publish us.
I tell young writers who are concerned that they have not published a book -- not even a chapbook -- not to wait around for others to publish you.
Master of Self-Publication
My favorite poet was Lalo Delgado. Lalo printed one book with someone else. Everything else was pretty much self-published. Now, I may be wrong. When I made a bibliography of Lalo's writings for him, he remarked a la Ricardo Sanchez, “faltaste papel?”
If any of you were blessed to hear Lalo read, he always carried around this black box-briefcase that he would open right after readings and lay out this chapbooks to sell.
Nevertheless, many a poet has gone to their graves with publications in hot university presses and New York presses, yet, they remain unknown to their gente.
There is a drawback
There is a drawback, carnales y carnalas. With much of Lalo's work, the small printings that were done, the books are in the hands of collectors and maybe a few libraries. In doing critical analysis, it is difficult to find his works.
Publishing big helps us bring our words to our gente. Shit, I just contradicted myself. Well, let's put it this way: not many of us have the reputation Lalo Delgado, much less the personality or panza. All we have to rely on our writings, so God help us.
By publishing with big New York presses y lo de mas, we are breaking barriers. Remember, as I said in the last two installments, there was a time when New York was not publishing us, much less university presses. So put yourself out there.
But before that big book contract arrives (and why not after), don't be afraid to put out a chapbook. Enter a chapbook contest or use your own funds to publish a chapbook.
Plenty of years ahead for world-wide and historical recognition
I know what you thinking, “oh but if I publish a chapbook, my 'first' book won't be critically acclaimed."
Don't worry. Especially for you young writers -- you have plenty of time.
Let's do the math:
Say you are a 25 year old writer, and most Noble Laureates in Literature are over age 60 when they win the prize (I pulled that age out of my ass, don't quote me on it). If you are male, you can expect to live to 81.5. That's 56 years more to win the Nobel.
If you are a women, it's even longer. If you are a Rojas women (avg. life expectancy 100), even longer. If you are somewhere in between the genders, sorry I can't help you with the life expectancy. Blame the government.
I remember when....I knew her when...
Aside from making Chicano(a) Literature survive, aside from being economical, aside from being a form of rebellion, the chapbook often gives (forgive the cliché) a portrait of an artist as a young (wo)man.
People want to see how you were writing before that Pulitzer came, before New York came calling, before your agent responds to your email for you.
Another reason to self publish, is today's grassroots publishers become tomorrow elitist publisher, getting published gets stickier and stickier. Selection committees are filled with conflicts of interest, sanchos, carnales and more. Who you know is a big factor just as writing good shit is a big factor.
Now, I'm not dissing my carnalas and carnales who have become successful (read Sandra Cisneros is a Sellout!: Our Love Hate Relationship with Successful Chicano(a) Authors). But it seems the more educated I've become, the more I miss that old time rock n' roll. I've become more critical. I miss when I was less critical. The older older we get, aside from Metamucil, the more we dislike shit.
The more critical I've become, I may have become one of those elitist writers (I've become elitist, I'm still waiting for the success to come my way). Hold on, let me take a sip of my wine and eat my cheese...
So what do I tell young writers -- publish yourself, but also send out your stuff.
It's not to say that you should publish crap. The last thing we want is crapbooks! Select some of your best stuff or have a more veteran writer help you select your best stuff. Go see a printer, and publish yourself.
Now for veterano writers, especially those with money: It is nice to see a veterano writer publish a chapbook now and then. I think Ana Castillo just put one out. It's nice to see that she returns to the grassroots publication mode. Now I'm not in favor of the $40 dollar chapbook, but why not.
Take your seat in your office, take a peak at the Pulitzer and the Nobel medal on the mantel, and for grassroots sake, write out a chapbook.
Only remember, if you are going to publish a chapbook, publish a chapbook. Don't publish a book! Keep in simple. Remember, “chap” is derived fro cheap. Keep your chapbooks them chaparito. Use you at-home printer. If you have a few bucks, see a local printer. They can run a few hundred for you or more. Print on demand. If you run out, order or print some more.
In this way, you will always have something to sell at your readings, and who knows, that chapbook may become a collectors item someday.
Everywritersresource.com's list of Chapbook publishers. Read the list.
(University of Arizona Press (June 13, 2009ISBN 978-0-8165-2917-9)
Luis Urrieta Jr..
Combining approaches from anthropology and cultural studies, this book examines how issues of identity, agency, and social movements shape the lives of Chicana and Chicano activist educators in U.S. Schools. Luis Urrieta Jr. skillfully utilizes the cultural concepts of positioning, figured worlds, and self-authorship, along with Chicano Studies and Chicana feminist frameworks, to tell the story of twenty-four Mexican Americans who have successfully navigated school systems as students and later as activist educators.
(St. Martin's Griffin/Thomas Dunne Books, June 2010 ISBN: 978-0-312-59308-7)
M. Padilla.
Inspired by their good-natured rivalry, career-oriented best friends Julia Juarez and Ime Benevides have never let anything come between them. Then enters Julia's new coworker, Ilario, who pulls both women's heartstrings, disrupts their friendship, and brings Julia's career to the brink of disaster.
Looking for support, Julia turns to her other friends: Concepción, a party-obsessed dance instructor; Nina, a timid but shrewd seamstress who's not too taken with her fiancé; and Marta, owner of the Revolutionary Cantina, who is preoccupied with the details of a Hollywood murder case.
When they involve Julia in a risky scheme, she must choose between her loyalty to her friends and a chance to live the life she's worked so hard to achieve. Boasting irreverent, edgy humor and a clear sense of Southern Californian culture, this hilarious, insightful debut novel by award-winning author M. Padilla brilliantly captures the comforts and dangers of friendship. http://us.macmillan.com/thegirlsfromtherevolutionarycantina
Martinez, winner of the 2009 Walt Whitman Award (selected by Juan Felipe Herrera) surgically dissects Chicanismo into three sections; Etymology, Corporeity and Archetype, each which translates into an authentic and more modern examination of the mental and physical existence of Chicano identity. In the poem sub-titled, To Possess Identity, Difference Must Be Gathered, Martinez writes, “I said. I am Mexican, next I can be a Chicano, she with the hole at the end of identity.
"I would never have written “Lydia” if I lived in El Paso or Dallas. I am aware of the issues that LGBT people face every day here."
Q: Will you stop writing about Texas? I kind of cherish Texas and, at the same time, revile it. ... But I’ll never leave (El Paso) because so much of who I am is still there. It’s a city on the cusp of two eras, two countries, two ways of life, two ways of seeing the world. ... I was raised half a mile from the border. ... I will go back to El Paso a lot
Ever sinceRicardo Sanchez walked on the scene in the late 1960s, the pinto poet has been a mainstay of Chicano Literature. This is not to say that there were no Chicano prison writing before Sanchez, but limiting ourselves to the Chicano Renaissance, Sanchez brought pinto poetry to the main stage where Raul Salinas and Jimmy Santiago Baca would later step onto.
In Movements in Chicano Poetry: Against Myths, against Margins by Rafael Perez Torres, the author dedicates an entire chapter of the pinto in Chicano poetry. Later literary critics has focused on Judy Lucero. Miguel R. Lopez published an aritlce on Ricardo Sanchez called, "THE PINTO POET AND THE CRITIC:RICARDO SANCHEZ AND POSTMODERN THEORY."
Lopez is somewhat critical of Perez Torres analysis of pinto poetry as well as critical of Cordelia Candelaria and Gary Soto's analysis regarding early Chicano Renaissance poetry. But that's another post...
Prison writing have always been a gem for readers. From short stays like Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Burmingham Jail" to Leanard Peltier's Prison Writings: My Life is My Sun Dance, Mandela's writing from Robben Island, Antonio Gramci'sPrison Notebooks, Ricardo Flores Magon's Prison Notebooks, and much more, the prison writing popularity remains. It would be a disservice not to mention the great Russian writers on imprisonment such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and his various writings.
La Pinta: Chicana/o Prisoner Literature, Culture, and Politics
(Univ of Texas Press January 2010 ISBN-10: 0292719612), B. V. Olguín.
Publisher's Description:
In this groundbreaking study based on archival research about Chicana and Chicano prisoners--known as Pintas and Pintos--as well as fresh interpretations of works by renowned Pinta and Pinto authors and activists, B. V. Olguín provides crucial insights into the central roles that incarceration and the incarcerated have played in the evolution of Chicana/o history, cultural paradigms, and oppositional political praxis. This is the first text on prisoners in general, and Chicana/o and Latina/o prisoners in particular, that provides a range of case studies from the nineteenth century to the present.
Olguín places multiple approaches in dialogue through the pairing of representational figures in the history of Chicana/o incarceration with specific themes and topics. Case studies on the first nineteenth-century Chicana prisoner in San Quentin State Prison, Modesta Avila; renowned late-twentieth-century Chicano poets Raúl Salinas, Ricardo Sánchez, and Jimmy Santiago Baca; lesser-known Chicana pinta and author Judy Lucero; and infamous Chicano drug baron and social bandit Fred Gómez Carrasco are aligned with themes from popular culture such as prisoner tattoo art and handkerchief art, Hollywood Chicana/o gangxploitation and the prisoner film "American Me," and prisoner education projects.
Olguín provides a refreshing critical interrogation of Chicana/o subaltern agency, which too often is celebrated as unambiguously resistant and oppositional. As such, this study challenges long-held presumptions about Chicana/o cultures of resistance and proposes important explorations of the complex and contradictory relationship between Chicana/o agency and ideology.
B. V. Olguín is Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Texas at San Antonio. He is a poet and co-translator, with Omar Vasquez Barboza, of Cantos de Adolescencia/Songs of Youth by Américo Paredes.
EL PASO WRITER UPDATES
Ben There Done That
We caught this blog post on the Biekergaard blog on Ben Saenz and an interview he gave with Rain Taxi. READ MORE.
The Bookish Blather has a review on Saenz' Last Night I Sang to the Monster: "While I have mixed feelings about the existence of the new BFYA list, one thing I am very positive about is Last Night I Sang to the Monster deserves to be on all sorts of "best of" lists. It's nominated for the Nerds Heart YA contest and I hope it goes far! This is definitely a title that needs more exposure." READ MORE.
This is our introduction to a series of questions for the Dean of Chicano Literary Criticism, Felipe de Ortego y Gasca. Our first questions came about from exploration of what is being published by Raza writers in 2010. Amazingly, we found many bilingual children's book, but far more written by non-Chicano(as) and Latinos(as).
Questions for the Dean
1. PF: Dr. Ortego, as you know Pluma Fronteriza started "Libros, Libros" a few years ago on an idea you suggested to Pluma. As I go through finding out what new in Chicana(o) Literature, we find more and more bilingual books for children, but finding more and more of these coming out from White writers than Chicano writers. We've seen an explosion of Chicano and Latino Childrens Lit in the last 15 years. So relating to this topic, can you describe to us what Literatura chicanesca is?
Ortego: As the term has evolved since Francisco Lomeli used it, "literatura chicaniesca" is a work of literature about Chicanos/as by non-Chicano/a writers. Descriptively, the term is useful, provided it's understood that the term is not validation of the work as a "Chicano work."
2. PF: Regarding literature chicaniesca, do authors like your friend John Nichols fall into this category? Joe Hayes?
Ortego: Question 2: Yes, those works about Chicanos by John Nichols and Joe Hayes fall into the category of "literatura chicaniesca," no matter how "Chicano" the works might be, like "Famous All Over Town."
3. PF: After almost 40 years after the exposure of Amado Muro as Chester Seltzer, do you have any reflections about that exposure?
Ortego: I liked Muro/Seltzer's works. He was indeed a remarkable writer who captured the essence of the Chicano experience. Lastima that he had to project himself as a Chicano writer. Having exposed him as a non-Chicano, did not leave me with any satisfaction. I was disappointed. I'm left with the residue of an author of a good work misrepresenting him/herself.
4. PF: Now in the extreme, are you familiar with The Education of Little Tree, the memoir-style novel written by Asa Earl Carter under the pseudonym Forrest Carter? This once Native American Literature gem's author was exposed an an ex-KKK member, speech writer for Alabama Gov. Wallace, and candidate for Alabama governor running on a segregationist platform in 1970? What are you thoughts on this?
Ortego: Here again is a question of "authorial misrepresentation". I'm struck, however, by the alluring power of Chicano (or "other") identity such that it impels "misrepresentation" by non-Chicanos (or non-others).
NEW BOOKS IN JUNE
North Star: A Memoir
Peter Camejo
Haymarket Books (June 1, 2010)
"Peter was a friend, colleague and politically courageous champion of the downtrodden and mistreated of the entire Western Hemisphere."—Ralph Nader
This is the autobiography of a remarkable life. As The New York Times wrote, "A first generation Venezuelan-American . . . Mr. Camejo [spoke] out against the Vietnam War and for the rights of migrant workers. He marched in Selma, Alabama, with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King."
Peter Camejo (1939-2008) founded the California Green Party, won 360,000 votes in his run for governor in 2002, and ran as Ralph Nader's vice presidential candidate in 2004.
Resistance on the Air: Indigenous Radio and the Struggle for Social Justice in Colombia
(South End Press June 1, 2010 ISBN-13: 978-0896087866), Mario A. Murillo.
Award-winning journalist Mario A. Murillo introduces the world to Colombia’s popular media movement, a fierce and creative force of change in this war-torn nation, linking the global struggles against media, corporate, and state plutocracy. Voices of Resistance vividly chronicles an indigenous-led, broad-based national effort to effectively transform society through media and organizing.
The storytelling focus in these pages is indigenous radio, particularly the community-built media hub Radio Payu’mat. In one example of grassroots innovation, an indigenous reporter rides alongside a march on a radio-cicleta — a tandem bicycle with a loudspeaker and small transmitter. His bike-radio sends reports back to a student-run radio station, which relays that signal to Radio Payu’mat’s 2,000-watt transmitter.
As a result, a much larger audience suddenly has access to an event typically ignored by Colombia’s commercial media.
Isabel Allende's House of the Spirits Trilogy: Narrative Geographies
(MonografÃas A) (Monografías A) (Tamesis Books June 17, 2010 ISBN-10: 1855662000)
Karen Wooley Martin.
Allende's very popular novels have attracted both critical approval and opprobrium, often at the expense of genuine analysis. This sophisticated study explores the narrative architecture of Allende's House of the Spirits (1982), Daughter of Fortune (1999), and Portrait in Sepia (2000) as a trilogy, proposing that the places created in these novels subvert the patriarchal norms that have governed politics, sexuality, and ethnicity.
Rooted in the Foucauldian premise that the history of space is essentially the history of power, and supported by Susan Stanford Friedman's cultural geographies of encounter as well as Gloria Anzaldua's study of borderlands, this study shows that, by rejecting traditional spatial hierarchies, Allende's trilogy systematically deterritorializes the elite while shifting the previously marginalized to the physical and thematic centers of her works.
This movement provides the narrative energy which draws the reader into Allende's universe, and sustains the 'good story' for which she has been universally acclaimed.
Couture and Consensus: Fashion and Politics in Postcolonial Argentina
(Cultural Studies of the Americas)(Univ Of Minnesota Press June 25, 2010 ISBN-10: 0816647941)
Regina A. Root
Following Argentina’s revolution in 1810, the dress of young patriots inspired a nation and distanced its politics from the relics of Spanish colonialism. Regina A. Root maps this pivotal and overlooked facet of Argentine cultural history, showing how politics emerged from dress to disrupt authoritarian practices and stimulate creativity in a newly independent nation
Puerto Rican Citizen: History and Political Identity in Twentieth-Century New York City
(Historical Studies of Urban America)(Univ Of Chicago Press June 15, 2010 ISBN-10: 0226796086)
Lorrin Thomas
By the end of the 1920s, just ten years after the Jones Act first made them full-fledged Americans, more than 45,000 native Puerto Ricans had left their homes and entered the United States, citizenship papers in hand, forming one of New York City’s most complex and unique migrant communities.
In Puerto Rican Citizen, Lorrin Thomas for the first time unravels the many tensions — historical, racial, political, and economic — that defined the experience of this group of American citizens before and after World War II.
Violence in Argentine Literature and Film: 1989-2005
(Turning Points) (Univ of Calgary Press June 15, 2010 ISBN-10: 1552385043)
Carolina Rocha (Editor), Elizabeth Montes Garces (Editor)
Why has violence been a predominant topic in contemporary Argentine film and literature? What conclusions can be drawn from the dissemination of violent images and narratives that depict violence in Argentina? In Argentina, the problem of violence is rooted in the country's long experience with authoritarian rule as well as in more recent trends such as the weakening of the state and the rule of law brought about by neo-liberal reforms.
The 11 essays that make up this collection seek to interpret and analyze the extent to which violence communicates structural inequalities or lines of fissure in contemporary Argentina resulting from the transformations that the state, the economy, and society in general have experienced during the past two decades.
Applying a variety of critical approaches, the contributors explore violence in Argentine cultural productions as it relates to four broad themes: the body as site of physical violence, the legacies of Argentina's authoritarian past, the collapse of the myth of the Argentine nation, and the current battles over how to define particular 'social and geographical places' in the context of an increasingly violent society.
Defining Latin American Art / Hacia Una Definicion Del Arte Latinoamericano
(McFarland & Company; Bilingual edition June 6, 2010 ISBN-10: 0786460830)
Dorothy Chaplik.
This bilingual book describes the numerous elements that have shaped the 20th and 21st century art of Latin America.
Beginning with the pre-Columbian cultures of Mexico, Central America, South America and the Caribbean Islands, and following historical developments through today, the values and symbols of these early civilizations have remained a constant in much of Latin American art.
The work gives a brief history of Latin American art, defines the modernist movements and trends that surfaced in Paris in the early 20th century and traces the way Latin American artists adapted the forms to express their own national culture.
The main section is a list of significant artworks, each accompanied by biographical details from the artist's life, an explanation of the work's subject matter and a discussion of the inspiration and meaning behind it. The work boasts a wide selection of illustrations, including three color inserts, and concludes with a bibliography.
Left Behind: Latin America and the False Promise of Populism
(University Of Chicago Press June 1, 2010 ISBN-10: 0226184781)
Sebastian Edwards
The political and economic history of Latin America has been marked by great hopes and even greater disappointments.
Despite abundant resources — and a history of productivity and wealth — in recent decades the region has fallen further and further behind developed nations, surpassed even by other developing economies in Southeast Asia and elsewhere.
In Left Behind, Sebastian Edwards explains why the nations of Latin America have failed to share in the fruits of globalization and forcefully highlights the dangers of the recent turn to economic populism in the region.
He begins by detailing the many ways Latin American governments have stifled economic development over the years through excessive regulation, currency manipulation, and thoroughgoing corruption. He then turns to the neoliberal reforms of the early 1990s, which called for the elimination of deficits, lowering of trade barriers, and privatization of inefficient public enterprises — and which, Edwards argues, held the promise of freeing Latin America from the burdens of the past.
Flawed implementation, however, meant the promised gains of globalization were never felt by the mass of citizens, and growing frustration with stalled progress has led to a resurgence of populism throughout the region, exemplified by the economic policies of Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez.
But such measures, Edwards warns, are a recipe for disaster; instead, he argues, the way forward for Latin America lies in further market reforms, more honestly pursued and fairly implemented. As an example of the promise of that approach, Edwards points to Latin America's giant, Brazil, which under the successful administration of President Luis Inácio da Silva (Lula) has finally begun to show signs of reaching its true economic potential.
As the global financial crisis has reminded us, the risks posed by failing economies extend far beyond their national borders. Putting Latin America back on a path toward sustained growth is crucial not just for the region but for the world, and Left Behind offers a clear, concise blueprint for the way forward.
Tropes of Enlightenment in the Age of Bolivar: Simon Rodriguez and the American Essay at Revolution
(Vanderbilt Univ Press June 2010 ISBN 9780826516930)
Ronald Briggs
Briggs shines a much-needed light on the writings and life of Simon Rodriguez, early tutor to the hero of Latin American independence Simon Bolivar and an accomplished essayist in his own right.
The book, released during the bicentennial of the early wars for Latin American independence, boldly places Rodriguez in the pantheon of important writers who influenced philosophical thought during the upheavals of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Noah Webster, and Tom Paine. www.vanderbiltuniversitypress.com
Intersecting Inequalities: Women and Social Policy in Peru, 1990-2000
(Pennsylvania State University Press June 30, 2010 ISBN-10: 0271036702)
Jelke Boesten
As the only male head of state to address the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, Alberto Fujimori projected an image as a promoter of progressive policies to improve the condition of women, especially the poor, in society.
And indeed the Peruvian government did pursue such policies during his tenure in such areas as poverty relief, population control, and domestic violence.
These policies are used as case studies in this book to examine the relationship between gender/race/class/ethnic divisions and the state in its project of nation-building.
This investigation reveals that policy meant to further women's development and emancipation often reproduced the marginality it was supposed to fight and depicts the strategies women developed to negotiate with and challenge the state.
EL PASO WRITER UPDATE
Ph.D. at UCLA
Just last week, we focused on Alicia Gaspar de Alba. Here a a link to the Ph.D. program that is being implemented under her leadership at UCLA's Chicano Studies Department.Check out the story at the MALCS website.
Chico Lingo
Check out Sergio Troncoso's new post "Illegal is Illegal" on the Chico Lingo blog.
El Paso, Texas, Aztlán (el chuco) is bright blue. I ask myself if maybe someone paints it that way. Maybe it was Carlols Rosas preparing his first mural in the sky. I limp on my way to my Special Services office. Probably it is an arthritis pain on my left led. This is the University of Texas at El Paso where many Chicanos nodge daily inches of educational progress. This is one of those Austin controlled institutions of higher learning. Mechas are soldier/students at the bureaucratic barbed wire battlefields of academia. They greet me with a smile, a craca or a clenched fist salute as I meet them on campus. I have decided to share as unselfishly as possible a year of my life with them. In this year I will share verses, poems, thoughts, humanlogos, or mere quejas de la Raza.
Last year I almost entered into competition with other Chicano writers in the Quinto Sol contest. Two things made me decide not to compete. One was that such contests are for unpublished Chicanos and I had already a book out. The contest, I thought, was only for amateur barrio carnales so that they could be exposed and printed. I thought myself to be in another league. This, of course, was puro mitote on my part. I remain as much barrio as ever. I am probably much more an amateur dispute my one book and a couple of others which have come out since.
The other argument held more water. A Chicano does not compete with anotherone. Competition is an anglo concept. Contests, for that matter, are also an anglo trick to lure participants into false sense of accomplishment. I must admit that competition is a very natural human inner drive. To compete in natural. We compete with each other by merely saying buenos días. The tone of sincerity with which we bid each other a good day differs.
I decided to use this one year and prepare a daily piece of verse or prose and at the end of the year enter it into the next year contest. A year full of Laloisms. This gave me the idea for the title of the book. There is no chronological order to the pieces. Some have taken place in the past while others belong yet to the future. Some of them are the now time. The way is which I randomly assemble this book is the same way in which I live.
Since I left Denver in a zombie-like state I hope the work here is of a medicinal nature for my broken down spirit. Lio de faldas, we say in our own language. How far that misses saying surrendering completely to the opposite sex. This insanity provocada por amor renders the most conservative into fools and clowns. Therapeutic is the way I judge my present writings. They prevent me from an obvious mental breakdown. Worse yet they prevent a real suicide and allow me to live after killing myself with an overdose of words.
It cannot be called anything else but crazy...I mean this demonic desire to make myself before the world. I want those who read what I write to become the nails and the cross for my painless cruxifision. More than mere verses mine are public confessions in search of atonement. These words which I produce are the valor lacking in me. These words are the miopic reactions to the love/life experience which if more realistically portraited would find its way into the horror movies. Fifty two Wednesdays de cenisas y cincunaydos viernes santos await you.
---------
One Cray Dallas Pig...One Chicano Riot
by Lalo Delgado santos rodriguez, latest member de los ninos heroes
---doce anos de vida ayer y hoy ya no eres.
your killer is a man without a mother,
he was aborted by the U.S. asphalt
as not even mother earth would have him.
dallas,
balas
from a magnum
blew half you head away
while your hands remained handcuffed
the, quotes, police officer,
not you, turned to be the one with a record.
two blacks...young also..like you.
the department must have, without a doubt,
playing an officer of the law.
join now, santos, the long line of crosses color brown...
jr. martinez will teach you how to dance,
ricardo falcon will share with you his gran coraje,
ruben salazar will teach you how to write.
if what happened to you had happened some years back
the crime would have gone unnoticed,
now, anger intead of tears, a riot instead of oraciones
yes, carnalito, you're front page stuff en nuestros corazones.
Ray Rojas Note: Also of interest on topic of Santos Rodriguez is "Santos Rodriguez" by Ricardo Sanchez. Of note, it is Sanchez legendary "tum, tum, tum, tum" poem. Lalo Delgado, in his oral history, told a story that they would kid Sanchez about the length of his readings at poetry readings and Lalo said, "Hey vato (referring to Sanchez after a reading), maybe if you left out one or two 'tum tums' we'd all have time to read." Newspaper mentioning the death of Santos Rodriguez with photo.
Chicano Writing and Korea: Lacking
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